Hard Rock slow to turn heads outside Strand

By Lisa Fleisher - The Sun News

ORLANDO, Fla. --

Hard Rock Park might be the biggest thing happening in Myrtle Beach, but beyond the Grand Strand, it's hardly a blip on the radar.

Dozens of people at an industry convention this week shook their heads "no" when asked if they had heard of the $400 million rock 'n' roll theme park, slated to open in April.

Mostly, if they had heard of it, they were either doing business with the park or were roller coaster junkies.

Some had heard of it through the newsletter sent out by the trade association, the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, which is sponsoring the amusements expo in Orlando.

The park was featured in the association's kickoff video as one of the new things to watch out for in the industry.

"My experience is, it depends on the size of the park, who owns it and where it's going," said Jonathan Schloss, who works for International Mascot Corp. "To be perfectly honest, it's got all three going against it."

Schloss, who said he had worked for years at Anheuser-Busch parks, said the upside is that Myrtle Beach has plenty of room to grow as a destination.

Almost every international visitor interviewed at the convention said that they had heard of Hard Rock, yes, but not the park.

Megan Winnett, spokeswoman for Hard Rock Park, said the company was not worried about attracting people from the far corners of the United States, especially in its first year. The park aims to lure 30,000 visitors a day during the summer.

"We're going to rely heavily on the existing Myrtle Beach visitor base of 14 million visitors a year," she said. "It's not like we're in the middle of nowhere and we're trying to get them to come specifically to Hard Rock."

She said people from 46 or 47 states and 25 countries have visited the preview station set up at the park site.

The park will be doing a lot of regional advertising and national promotions and contests, but limited national advertising, said Kerry Graves, vice president of sales and marketing for the park. He said park officials were hesitant to do too much advertising until they had photos of the park as close as possible to completion.

"The majority of our advertising will start hitting around March or April," he said.

While people who work at companies that specialize in an array of ancillary theme park items - tickets, popcorn machines, insurance, costume characters, media companies and technology - said they had not heard of the park, there was one segment of the industry sure to know: those with roller coaster companies.

"Every day there's chatter" online, said Chris Gray, of Great Coasters International Inc., "There's a lot of buzz in the enthusiasts community, and then the press becomes interested in what they have to say."

One of the trade show's interns, Josh Liebman, can't wait for the park to open. Liebman is a junior at the University of Central Florida majoring in theme parks and attractions management, and he already applied for a job at Hard Rock Park. He's also interviewing the park's CEO, Steven Goodwin, for a major class project. He said his dream is to open his own theme park.

"I would love to help open a park," Liebman said. "I would love to be there working on the day the park opens and see what that's like."

Robin Turner, vice president of a company called Wonderworks, said he had heard of the park only because his company is thinking about opening a new location in Myrtle Beach.

"It looks impressive," said Turner, who said he'd driven around the park's construction site on George Bishop Parkway off of U.S. 501. "[But] if I hadn't been looking at Myrtle Beach, I wouldn't have heard of it. There's no buzz."

Turner said the company has plenty of time to create that buzz.

"They're strategically placed" along the East Coast, he said.

Contact LISA FLEISHER at 626-0317 or lfleisher@thesunnews.com.